Visual Interface
<tool, text> (vi) /V-I/, /vi:/, *never* /siks/ A screen editor crufted
together by Bill Joy for an early BSD release. vi became the de facto standard
Unix editor and a nearly undisputed hacker favourite outside of MIT until the
rise of Emacs after about 1984.
It tends to frustrate new users no end, as it will neither take commands while
expecting input text nor vice versa, and the default setup provides no
indication of which mode the editor is in (one correspondent accordingly reports
that he has often heard the editor's name pronounced /vi:l/). Nevertheless it is
still widely used (about half the respondents in a 1991 Usenet poll preferred
it), and even some Emacs fans resort to it as a mail editor and for small
editing jobs (mainly because it starts up faster than the bulkier versions of
Emacs).
See holy wars.
(1995-10-03)
Nearby terms:
Visual dBASE « Visual Display Unit « Visual FoxPro «
Visual Interface » visualisation » visual
language » visual programming
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